Welcome to the new Bryans Gallery website!

Our new website features many of the artists we work with including; Tom White, Renee Steger Simpson, Bob Rohm, Laurie Hill Phelps, and  Gregory Lomayesva. We offer some of the most unique Native American and Southwestern art available today. From hand carved items and masks, pottery, jewelry, Zuni fetishes, pottery, Estate items and more!

The Santero

Folk art, which originated in the mid to late 1700’s in Northern New Mexico, is the art of the Santero. People arrived from long and arduous journeys, lacking decorations or ornaments for their homes and churches. Folk art blossomed from a necessity.

The Santero was a painter and carver of images. Pine panels split from logs were called “retablos”. The Santero evened out the front and back panel and sanded the front to provide a smooth painting surface. Baked gypsum rocks were finely crushed, then mixed with water and glue made from rabbit skins and animal hooves. This mixture was painted on the front of the pine panel and allowed to dry. After sanding, the Santero would either sketch or paint free hand an image of a saint. He gathered clays to make yellow ochre and reds, traded with neighboring pueblos for the color of azure, purchased imported indigo for blues, sumac berries for bright reds and created blacks from lampblack and charcoal. Other colors were adaptations of vegetable dyes that local weavers used, plus dried cochineal bugs. Brushes were made from available sources, yucca fibers, animal hairs and chicken feathers. A “bulto”, or image carved in the round, began as a piece or root of the cottonwood tree, or sometimes pine. If the figure was large, the head, hands and feet were carved separately, and then attached later using dowels and animal glue. After the bulto was gessoed, it was painted in the same fashion as a retablo.

As Santeros became more proficient, altar screens called “Reredos” were commissioned. Fine examples of the Reredos can be found in Northern New Mexico’s churches at Chimayo, Santa Cruz, Cordova, Truchas, Trampas, Guadalupe de Taos and Rancho de Taos. In Santa Fe, you will find a Reredos at the San Miguel Church.

The art of the Santero flourished until the 1860’s when French priests new to the area, found this folk art to be distasteful and primitive. This art form was barely visible by the turn of the 20th century. It was revived with the WPA programs in the 1930’s and later through the efforts of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, beginning in the 1950’s. Support of this art form continues today.

Marie Romero Cash is the featured artist today. She is a Santera. Creating award-winning santos, her art is constantly evolving. Many of her retablos and bultos are contemporary subjects created using traditional techniques and natural dye paints.

Romero Cash joined her sister, Anita Romero Jones, at Spanish Market, Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1974. At that time, there were only two other Santeras at Spanish Market, Gloria Lopez and Monica Sosaya Halford. Romero Cash has been see at the Museum of International Folk Art, the Palace of the Governors, both in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and her pieces honor the Vatican.

Bottom line is that she loves to delight the viewer. When someone looks at her work and their eyes light up, it is the substance for the soul.

Figurative Pieces and Storytellers

Figurative pottery comes from an old tradition. Prehistoric potters made several different animal and human forms. The Spanish clergy, who arrived in New Mexico, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were zealous in destroying these pieces. A result of this persecution was a 400 year gap in Middle Rio Grande figurative pottery pieces. There is no evidence of these pieces from the 1500’s to 1875.

In 1880, the railroad arrived in New Mexico, and a new market for figurative pottery resurged. A vast array of items took form as human figures, cowboys, caricatures, animals and clowns. One form that is  noted was called  “Singing Mother”, which was a woman holding a child. In the late nineteenth century, almost all Middle Rio Grande Pueblos as well as Hopi and Zuni Pueblos made some form of figurative pottery for the tourist trade.

Anderson and Avelia Peynetsa


Zuni Pottery has a rocky history. There were very few potters from the 1920’s to the 30’s. 1979 saw only one traditional Zuni  potter, Jennie Laate, at  SWAIA Santa Fe’s Indian Market.
Daisy Hooee, Nampeyo’s granddaughter, was Hopi. She married a Zuni man and began teaching traditional pottery at Zuni High School. Years later, Jennie Laate took this position. These women were instrumental in keeping alive a tradition of pottery for a younger generation. Sadly, few talented students pursued pottery after high school. However, there was one distinctive student that studied under Jennie Laate. Anderson Peynetsa was that exception. Since the early 1980’s Anderson and Avelia dig their own clay and use traditional forms and mineral slips. A trip to National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C., opened a pathway to older designs and forms, consistent in the Penynetsa’s body of work.
As each pot is created, Anderson makes the pottery and Avelia does the sanding and polishing. Avelia’s lineage dates back to Catalina Zuni, who taught pottery at Zuni Pueblo from 1920 to late 1930’s.

Shows and Collections

Heard Museum of Northern Arizona, Phoenix, AZ
SWAIA Indian Market in Santa Fe, NM
Eight Northern Pueblos Show, Santa Clara Pueblo, NM
NM State Fair